1. Not a musician, but still was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
2. Fender had a radio repair shop where he also fixed other electric devices. Musicians brought in their guitar pick-ups for repair. These were external pickups the musicians attached to their hollow body (acoustic) guitars.
3. Fender worked to integrate electronics into a solid body guitar and began marketing the Fender Broadcaster in 1948 (renamed the Telecaster). The Telecaster became THE instrument of electric guitarists with its clean, crisp sound.
4. In 1950 Fender began producing his solid body Precision bass.
Les Paul
1. Paul was half of the husband and wife duo Les Paul and Mary Ford. He also produced an electric guitar in 1952 which he named after himself, sold under the Gibson Co. name.
2. Fender and Gibson electric solid body guitars were and are the staples for rockers.
Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield): Between the Rural Blues and Rock 'n' Roll
1. His name evokes a muddy creek in Mississippi Delta area where he was born and meant to be a field hand, Instead Waters followed his dream to make a mark on the world. He transformed Delta Blues into music that would rock the world.
2. Muddy made popular the grouping of musicians that became the format for R&R: rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, drums, vocals, harmonica (replaced by keyboards in Rock).
3.In the mid 40's he began assaulting electrified guitar, playing electric blues.
4. In 1977 he wrote a song that has the sound of the Blues and the beat of Rock and Roll. the lyrics tell the story of how "The Blues had a Baby and They Named it Rock and Roll."
50's Rock: The first big rock hit
1. Rock bands use saxophone and electric guitar.
2. The earliest important rock group was Bill Haley and his Comets. Their "Rock Around the clock" was the first chartbuster in the new style, made popular in the movie "Blackboard Jungle: about rebel youths. "Rock Around the Clock" seemed rebellious; very loud, a smashing/pounding beat that seemed too sexy to many adults.
Elements of Rock : Comparison with Big Bands
1. The lead instrument in big bands was saxophone, a reedy sounding instrument: rock used electric guitar, which can be manipulated electronically to produce many kinds of sounds colors.
2. Rock is poetry and driving music: Big bands didn't always have vocals.
3. The singing style in Rock was based mostly on African American, folk, and country-Western music. Singers shout, holler, groan, wail ,and use falsetto,a way that male singers can get to high pitched notes. Rock singers also use repeated chants like "yeah, yeah, yeah" and sing syllables that don't have any meaning (nonsense syllables): Big band music was a more sophisticated, city kind of sound.
4. Rock beat is stronger than any other types of popular music in the 50's, and the beat is often driven heavier by having the rhythm instruments play two or three equal notes to one beat. (demo in class).
How Rock got known
1. More through radio and records than through live performances, and there wasn't much available on sheet music.
2. Rock was recorded on 45rpm records, small acetate discs that held one song on each side.
Rebel Idols
1. Rebels became teen idols: Marlon Brando and James Dean in film, Elvis Presley in music.
Elvis Presley
1. In the 50's he was a raw, fresh sound, an "aw schucks" Southern white boy who gyrated his pelvis and ground his guitar into his body as he played, singing in a style that was a cross between Delta Blues and Country.
2. In 1954 he went into Sun studios in Memphis to record two songs onto acetate as a birthday present for his mother. A staffer at Sun got the owner, Sam Phillips, interested in Presley. Phillips had been looking for a "white" singer with a "black" voice for over a year.
3. Contracted to Sun, Presley's earliest recordings in 1954-55 are some of his best work. His style was called "Rockabilly", a blend of Blues and Hillbilly styles.
4. His first national hit was "Heartbreak Hotel," which he sang as a guest on tv shows. The song was #1 on the billboared for 8 wks, followed by "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You," " Hound Dog," (#1 for 11 wks), "Love Me Tender" (#1 for 5 wks). All between April and November, 1956.
5. His music weds two traditional Southern music forms that had been separated culturally since before the Civil War: One 'white' the other 'black'. He overcame cultural segregation with his music.
6. In 1954 his first record for Sun was a two-side disc with a version of "That's All Right Mama", a blues tune that had been written by the 'black' musician Big Boy Crudup on the A side and Bill Monroe's"Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the B side.
7. A cultural revolution was started. Some places banned his recordings; anti-rock societies were formed; a vice squad secretely filmed a concert and tried to take him to court on a charge of public indecency.
8. American teens grabbed up his records by the millions, trouncing the prudishness that had been a characteristic of 'white' American culture.
Link to Rockin' 50's Part Two